The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) Read Online Free

waving the detention slip in the air like a flag.
    I raise an eyebrow. “To you? Are they asking you to sit in detention now?”
    “Anastasia…” he growls, and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He’s probably counting to ten.
    After mom died, I flirted with the trouble-maker lifestyle again, trying to outrun the demoralizing pity of the world. My father—Abe—let it slide at first, but then one day when I was out all night with Kyla (looking for Sura, but he never has to know that) he really flipped out. We screamed at each other, back and forth for twenty minutes, until words and voices failed us both. He punched the refrigerator door and broke his hand, and I walked out. I camped out for two days in the basement of an abandoned nunnery, next to the apple orchard near Kyla’s house. Eventually Kyla’s mother came and talked to me, and I deigned it appropriate to return.
    After that, Abe put himself in an anger management program for a few weeks, and hasn’t yelled at me since.
    I can’t say I feel good about any of that, but it is what it is.
    “It’s just detention, Dad,” I try to reason with him, unslinging my backpack and kicking off my boots. “It’s not the end of the world.”
    “You can’t keep skipping classes, Ana.” He looks at me with my own bright blue eyes, and sighs. “They’re not going to cut you any slack this year, you know that.”
    I frown, walking into the kitchen where he’s standing, as if the weight of the detention slip holds him there. “I don’t expect them to.”
    “If you fail, you’ll have to repeat, and you won’t graduate on time. Is that what you want?”
    I hold my tongue. Parents have this idea that graduating from high school is the end-all, be-all of adolescence. For me, a girl who is at times so grimly aware that the end of someone’s life could come at any moment, that seems pretty absurd. But you can’t tell that to your father. You can’t explain to him that we’re all dying, in some way, and high school is a massive waste of time.
    “My grades are fine,” I assure him. “Don’t worry about a few detentions. Consider them signs of life.”
    Abe hesitates, then sighs. “Okay, Ana. Just…” He struggles to find the words, and never does. He stares at me for a moment, like he does sometimes, and then smiles like the saddest man on earth. “I love you, kiddo. I just want what’s best for you. But let’s be honest, I don’t necessarily know what that is, do I?”
    I shift my weight and lean against the kitchen counter, uncomfortable with his honesty. “Is that a trick question?” I try to joke.
    He surprises me with a tender—huge—hand on my shoulder, and pulls me into a quick and awkward hug. Abe is a fire chief and, for as long as I can remember, he has always smelled faintly of char. It seems to emanate directly from his skin, under a scant layer of aftershave and soap. To me, it smells strangely like safety—like home.
    When he pulls back, his brow is furrowed. The last few years have aged him a decade; the fine lines around his eyes have become much less fine; the salt-and-pepper at his temples has dug its fingers deeper into his full head of black hair. “You know you can talk to me—”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” I interrupt him as tenderly as possible, my own eyebrows beetling together. “Every detention doesn’t call for a heart to heart, you know.”
    He frowns a little, but nods, rapping his knuckles on the counter before scooping up his keys. “I’ve gotta head out for my shift at the station. No boys over, okay?” He moves towards the front door, slipping on his jacket.
    “Actually, is it okay if I go to Kyla’s tonight?” I ask, plastering on a saccharin smile.
    He rolls his eyes. “Yes. Just don’t drive, you still don’t have your night license. And try not to get into trouble again, please .”
    “I’ll try,” I promise. Though it really depends on your definition of “trouble.”

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